


Perfectly Normal

by yuletide_archivist



Category: MASH (TV)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2004-12-23
Updated: 2004-12-23
Packaged: 2018-01-25 04:51:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,384
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1632512
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yuletide_archivist/pseuds/yuletide_archivist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Story by Malograntum Vitiorum</p><p>"Everything is completely normal. Just as normal as normal can be. If it wanted things any more normal around here, we'd have to call in Norman Rockwell and Doris Day to form a special Normality Committee."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Perfectly Normal

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Jane Carnall

 

 

Trapper tried, and failed, to will himself to take another bite of the day's special of chicken and/or fish. As he contemplated the mystery meat, Frank and Margaret joined him at the table. "Where's Pierce?" Frank asked.

"Lunch date." Trapper gestured toward another table, where Hawkeye and Nurse Liotta were feeding each other blobs of some ambiguous vegetable.

"Shameless." Frank shook his head. "After all the damage he's done lately with his little Don Juan act."

"Still sore about the Christmas incident, Frank?"

"Don't you talk like that was just a minor irritation, McIntyre. Of all the holidays to ruin, he had to flummox the birthday of Christ with his philandering."

"Well, how was he supposed to know her husband worked at the Army Post Office?"

Houlihan glared at him. "The whole camp gets punished because Pierce can't control himself. Do you think that's fair?"

"Hey, I had some Christmas cookies go stale myself," Trapper said agreeably. "And I saw Radar when all the packages that had been held up finally came pouring into camp. I thought his head would explode, trying to deal with about twenty-four days of Christmas in one afternoon."

"So why are you defending Pierce?"

"I'm not." Trapper glanced over at Hawkeye's tete-a-tete again. "Look at him. He thinks everyone's forgotten about it. He thinks everything's back to normal. Which means that now is the time to _strike._ " He punctuated his statement by stabbing his fork at the empty air.

Frank scowled. "McIntyre, if this is one of your juvenile pranks, we will be having no part of--"

Margaret leaned forward, cutting him off. "What did you have in mind?"

Frank, forced to make a split-second calculation taking into account the surprising new information provided by Margaret while maintaining the appropriate level of self-righteousness and doing his best not to directly contradict his own immediately previous statement, said nothing.

"It's simple enough," Trapper answered. He saw Radar on his way past, and flagged him down. "Hey, Radar. Come on and join the strategy meeting."

Frank found his voice in order to protest this violation of the caste system. "You're not confiding this idea of yours in Corporal O'Reilly?"

"I've already enlisted quite a few others. Radar knows all about it. He's in. Right, Radar?" In point of fact, Trapper had told Radar the scheme in a ten-second condensed version that morning and had gotten only a wide-eyed stare in reply.

"Well, I don't know, sir... I don't want to get in any trouble."

"Nobody's going to get in any trouble," Trapper reassured him. "It's just a little harmless fun. Don't you want to get back at Hawkeye for making your job a nightmare at the most wonderful time of the year?"

The twinkle in Radar's eye was the only answer he needed.

\- - -

Hawkeye was fairly sure the day had started out normally. Awful morning in surgery--check. Awful food for lunch, made slightly less awful by the company of a bright-eyed and pliable nurse--check. Three other nurses batting their eyelashes or saying something flirtatious to him on his way from the mess tent to his first postprandial patient--not really usual, but perfectly understandable.

The load of incoming wounded that arrived in the afternoon was a little heavier than normal, and Hawkeye found himself pulling off a few impossible stunts, and if he did say so himself, he felt pretty good when he'd sewed his last stitch and could finally sit down at the bar.

Houlihan joining him at the adjacent bar stool--unaccompanied by Frank--was not an everyday occurrence, but there was nothing wrong with it. Nor was there anything wrong, per se, with her saying, "Hawkeye, that was just _amazing,_ " in a tone that she generally reserved for--well, he didn't know what she reserved it for, that was kind of the point--but it was not what he would call...usual.

"Thanks. What's the punchline?"

"I'm serious." She leaned back on the bar, giving him what for want of a better term he could only call _the eye_. "I just don't give you enough credit sometimes, Hawkeye. You've got the steadiest hands of any surgeon here." If he could have bottled the way she said it, a few drops would have kept the Swamp warm until spring.

"I pride myself on my steady hands," Hawkeye answered on autopilot. "It's the result of a rigorous daily regime of alcohol and ennui."

Houlihan laughed a rich, full laugh, uncoiled herself from her seat and patted Hawkeye on the shoulder. "You just crack me up, you know that?" As she left, he could swear she _batted her eyelashes_ at him.

She breezed past Radar, whom Hawkeye now noticed standing by the door clutching a clipboard to his chest and looking at least as ill at ease as usual. "What can I do for you, Radar?"

"Oh," Radar said, as if he hadn't been prepared to talk. "It's not important." He paused half a second. "I-Is she, I mean, are you two..."

"What, Major Houlihan? Of course not." Hawkeye stared at the door, now wondering what she had been doing in the bar at all, besides using tones of voice on him. "I think she must have mistaken me for somebody else."

"Oh," Radar said, sounding very relieved. "I mean--um--oh."

"Radar! Don't tell me you're carrying a torch for the Major?"

Radar looked down and went a little quiet. "No, sir, I'm not." Hawkeye felt bad for embarrassing him. Radar was actually _blushing._ Must be something in the air.

Hawkeye absented himself without finding out what Radar wanted. It had been a long day, people were under stress, Margaret was an inexplicable woman. He would go take a shower--a cold shower, as if he had any choice in the matter--and everything would be back to normal.

As he walked to the showers, he passed a small knot of nurses who glanced at him, blushed and giggled, and resumed their conversation too quietly for him to hear.

Hawkeye was all soaped up and well into the second verse of "Lili Marlene" when Radar came into the showers, made eye contact with Hawkeye, made a small squeaking noise, turned around and went right back out the door.

"Radar?"

The door opened a crack and a hand holding a letter was thrust through it. "Here you go, Captain," Radar's muffled voice called out.

"Just come on in and put it down over there," Hawkeye called out, to no reply. He gave up, dripped his way to the door, took the envelope and put it aside in a dry spot. "Thanks for your modesty, Radar," he said to the closed door. He turned to Trapper, who had been minding his own business in the next shower stall. "What was all that?"

"Beats me," Trapper answered. "Radar's been acting funny around you, hasn't he?"

\- - -

The movie that night was _Casablanca,_ which Hawkeye assumed had sneaked past the Standards Commission somehow (that being the commission to ensure that the quality of films presented met only the very lowest standards). Houlihan gave him a smoky look as he came in looking for a seat. Two other nurses in the next row moved apart to make room for him. Another girl behind him and to the left cleared her throat conspicuously and, when he looked, smiled like a sunbeam. Well, a hungry sunbeam.

He took a seat near the back in an empty row. Nurse Liotta would probably be showing up soon anyway. He'd been there for a minute or two when Klinger plunked down next to him, bearing a large bowl of popcorn.

Hawkeye glanced over Klinger's evening ensemble. "Nice outfit."

"Thanks." Klinger turned his head to show off his earrings. "I think the blue really goes with--oh, damn." A small popping noise came from the back of his dress. Klinger craned his neck, nearly spilling his popcorn. "Hawkeye, could you zip me up?"

"On the first date?" Hawkeye found the offending zipper and, after a brief struggle with the device, got it zipped all the way up Klinger's back.

"You're a peach," Klinger said, offering him a handful of popcorn and--yes, he was batting his eyelashes. He certainly was.

Hawkeye almost started laughing aloud as it clicked into place. The whole camp hadn't suddenly fallen for him after all. They were in cahoots, probably led by that bastard Trapper. Well, all right. This was over the Christmas thing, and he probably deserved it, and he could take his medicine. He'd get Trapper back later.

Meanwhile.

Hawkeye said, "Oh, excuse me," to someone walking past in the aisle on his side, and moved unnecessarily closer to Klinger to make way. "You know," he said, "this is one of my favorite movies." He took a few kernels of popcorn from Klinger's gloved hand. "But then--" He leaned on Klinger's shoulder. "I'm just an old romantic."

He had the row to himself again in thirty seconds.

\- - -

Hawkeye didn't notice anyone else improperly romancing him between the end of the movie and dinner the next evening. He found he missed it a little bit.

Father Mulcahy had joined the officers for dinner, although as Hawkeye got nearer it became clear that he had been dragged to the table by Frank so that he and Margaret could expound to a presumably sympathetic ear about low morals in the camp.

With the three of them thus engaged, Trapper greeted Hawkeye. "Is Private Weston doing all right?"

"Sure, he'll be on his feet in a couple of--"

"Weston?" Frank snapped around, his eavesdropping powers clearly still at their peak.

"Philip Weston, Frank," Hawkeye reassured him. "Different guy. Don't worry, it's not the ghost of perverts past come to haunt you."

Mulcahy looked to them quizzically. "I think I'm missing something."

"Private _George_ Weston came through a while back after brawling with the other guys in his unit. They 'd stuck a homosexual label on the kid and beat the tar out of him. Word got out and it spooked the horses." Hawkeye jerked a thumb at Frank.

"I was not _spooked._ I told you before, Pierce, I don't want a man around who's going to jeopardize my unit."

"Frank, he wouldn't have jeopardized your unit if you were the last man on earth." Hawkeye didn't know if Frank was in on Trapper's conspiracy, but he wouldn't have passed on a setup line like that if you paid him.

Father Mulcahy made an unusual noise, but when the others turned to look he was engrossed in weighing the comparative merits of the green mush and the gray mush on his plate, and no one caught a glimpse of his expression. No one except Hawkeye, who saw the laugh just as it turned into an _ahem_ and nearly caught Mulcahy's eye _in media res_.

"Father," Frank said, finding a new angle. "What do you think of all this?"

Mulcahy looked pained at being dragged into the controversy. "All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God," he said.

"Come on now, Father, besides the Church boilerplate, what do you think?" Frank went on, seemingly oblivious to the fact that everyone at the table would rather he stapled his mouth shut.

"I think," Mulcahy said, meeting Frank's eye as he pinned down an unidentifiable vegetable with his fork, "that all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God."

Frank waved his hand dismissively. "Bah."

"Humbug," Hawkeye added. "Merry Christmas." He pretended not to notice Trapper's suspicious look.

\- - -

As they left the mess, Hawkeye said to Mulcahy, "I'd like to apologize on behalf of the laity, and indeed humanity in general, for Frank Burns."

"Oh, I didn't mind at all."

"I don't mean just that conversation, I mean for his overall existence."

"In my line of work, Hawkeye, you have to be patient with the quirks and foibles of others," Mulcahy said amiably, making him feel a little like a slow Sunday-school student. "You and I are no less sinners than George Weston--or Frank Burns."

"What a depressing thought."

"Oh, I don't know. I think it's cheering to think of how much we all have in common." Mulcahy smiled, and Hawkeye thought, not for the first time, that the priest had a subtler sense of humor than he was sometimes given credit for.

"I think we often concentrate too much on the things that divide us," Mulcahy went on, "and too little on the things that bring us together." As he spoke, he opened his hands wide and brought them together to illustrate, cradling the back of one hand gently in the palm of the other. "Don't you agree?" The question was probably rhetorical, but asked in such a way that--

All right, that was it.

He was just seeing double meanings in everything this week, through no fault of anyone else. He wasn't in fact the target of a grassroots Confuse Hawkeye campaign. The others might have plausibly signed up for something like that, but not Mulcahy. It was all in his head. Everything was normal. He had made up this entire thing.

That still left the question of why, exactly, he kept imagining that all of his colleagues were propositioning him.

"I'm sorry, did I say something wrong?" Oh, and Mulcahy was still standing there, possibly looking concerned because Hawkeye's mind was in outer space while he was talking to him.

"Sorry, Father. I was somewhere else."

"Well, if you ever need to talk," Mulcahy said with what was obviously just a perfectly normal amount of concern for a member of his flock. With the same perfectly normal amount of concern, he patted Hawkeye gently on the shoulder and walked off.

Maybe he should go talk to Sidney about this. He could just imagine how that would go. "So, I keep thinking that other men are flirting with me. What do you think that means?"

"Well, Hawkeye," said the unflappable imaginary Sidney, "either it means that other men are flirting with you, or it means you've developed a fixation on the idea of other men flirting with you, or both."

"I thought there might be a third option involving a massive conspiracy."

"Have you gotten any indecent suggestions from Colonel Flagg?"

"Not yet, but thanks for making me think about that. What does it mean that I thought Father Mulcahy was flirting with me?"

He could see Sidney leaning forward in his chair and pondering the notion thoughtfully. "Could be that you feel spiritually corrupted by the war and you're fixated on the idea of the purity and faith represented by his office, but you're not given to religious fervor, so it's manifesting itself in the more physical kind of interpersonal connection that you're more accustomed to. Or maybe you just wanted him to flirt with you."

"I'm warning you, Sid, if you keep this up I'm going to forcibly eject you from my woolgathering."

"Maybe he was saying exactly what you thought he was saying. Which way is worse?"

"All right, that's it. Next time I see you I'm going to give you a piece of my mind for being such a lousy imaginary analyst."

The fictive Sidney shrugged. "Might help you get that Section 8."

\- - -

Hawkeye stomped into the tent in a dark thundercloud of a mood that Trapper could see without even looking up from his book. He held the book up higher to hide his expression and said casually, "Evening, Hawkeye. Something wrong?"

"No! Everything's fine. Everything is completely normal. Just as normal as normal can be. If it wanted things any more normal around here, we'd have to call in Norman Rockwell and Doris Day to form a special Normality Committee."

"Glad to hear it."

"I need a drink."

Trapper cheerfully provided. Hawkeye looked annoyed and befuddled, which indicated that everyone had been doing their part. Oddly, though, Hawkeye didn't seem in the mood to talk. He settled in and got acquainted with one drink, then another, before he started to offer a commentary that Trapper couldn't quite follow.

"It's all perfectly normal. People just cope in different ways. You get thrust into in a hostile alien culture where you don't understand anything..."

"And just when you're starting to get used to that," Trapper offered, "they ship you off to Korea."

Hawkeye showed no sign of appreciation for the witticism, which Trapper had to admit wasn't one of his best. He wondered if something had gone wrong, or if someone had overdone it, and Hawkeye had been offended.

"It's only natural to experience a little culture shock. And confusion. A little confusion. You know, I love women. I really do. They're so..." Hawkeye gestured in a vague hourglass shape. "Proportioned. Nothing else like 'em."

Trapper slowly put his book down. "Are you okay?"

"And they smell so nice. I mean, not here, obviously. But back home. See, that's the problem. Everyone here smells the same." Hawkeye pulled his own shirt collar up to his nose and sniffed it to make his point.

Trapper blinked, opened his mouth, closed his mouth, got up, gestured vaguely at the door and said "I need to..."

Hawkeye continued to stare down his glass, muttering something indistinct about the merits of the common domesticated bosom. Trapper ducked out the door and was instantly reminded of how freezing it was outside. As he was about to go back in to keep his nipples from actually falling off, Frank finally made an appearance.

"Listen, McIntyre," Frank hailed him.

"Don't go in there," Trapper said immediately.

"What?"

"That is--I need to talk to you about, you know. Operation Hawkeye."

"Well, that's just what I wanted to say, McIntyre. I'm all for making life more difficult for Pierce, but--"

"It's okay. Abort mission. Abort mission. Cancel everything." Frank looked at him curiously. Trapper slowed down, tried to siphon off some of the panic from his voice and elaborated, "I think he suspects something."

"Does he? All for the best, I suppose. A joke can go too far, you know."

Trapper took a deep breath and counted down from five. He'd gotten to three when he abandoned that project. "Right. Let's go in, and we'll let him off the hook in the morning." Frank grunted agreement.

"I almost got married, you know," Hawkeye muttered into his glass as they entered the tent. "To a woman of the opposite sex."

"What's he talking about?"

"Never mind, Frank. Let's all get some sleep."

\- - -

Trapper spotted Hawkeye at breakfast the next morning sitting alone in the mess, staring down what might once have resembled a potato.

"So he's on to it?" Houlahan asked, eyeing Hawkeye as if trying to decide whether she thought he looked sufficiently out of sorts.

"Yeah, he's on to it," Trapper said as they headed for the table. "Let's give him a break. I think he's had enough."

Houlihan took a seat practically on Hawkeye's lap. "Hey there, Captain," she flounced, tossing her hair like a shampoo commercial.

Hawkeye looked at her with momentary confusion, looked at the others holding back laughter, and smiled. "Never knew you cared." If there was something a little off about his smile, only Trapper noticed.

Trapper settled in on his other side. "Morning, cutie. Got a date for the Major's Ball yet?"

"The what?"

"The Major's Ball. Ask Frank."

Frank frowned. "As far as I know, Majors don't have--"

Hawkeye laughed as loud as the rest of them, and it went without saying that they were now even.

\- - -

Trapper and Frank were already in the Swamp when Hawkeye came in that night. "Care for a drink, Hawkeye?" Trapper greeted him. "Or did you just come back to freshen up for your midnight rendezvous?"

"I'm through with love," Hawkeye said with great dignity. "Sometimes it's just too much even for me to handle."

"Fame is a hollow pursuit," Trapper answered solemnly, pouring Hawkeye a drink that was not quite as strong as what he'd given him the previous night.

"Yeah, yeah." Hawkeye sat down with a good-natured smile. "You win this round. All I want to know is, how the hell did you get Father Mulcahy in on it?"

Trapper looked up, puzzled. "How did we what?"

"...Never mind."

-end-

 


End file.
